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138 Chapter 7
had changed from the days of Suharto’s New Order, and there were now too many
elements beyond Golkar’s control.
Megawati confronted the same problem and found her attempts to rein in journal-
ists blocked by both media and public backlash. In a parallel development that gains
greater significance in the next chapter , before leaving office, Megawati also inadver-
tently helped create another vehicle for imposing accountability, the Corruption Erad-
ication Commission, which further complicated the maintenance of collusive pacts.
The story of the commission’s emergence provides another window into the odd
synergies generated in the mix of pressure for reform, often magnified by the media,
and the unpredictable unfolding of intraelite conflict. In it, civil-society mobilization
and self-serving political maneuvering converge to impact events where either alone
might have failed. More broadly, in the reformasi period, the media became players in
the twists and turns of elite maneuvering that now unfolded in public, adding a much
higher degree of uncertainty to competitions over power, patronage, and public opin-
ion. And this uncertainty in the smaller political contests between elections helped
ward off a return to the fixed outcomes of electoral contests under authoritarianism.
In this struggle, the press and public would develop a growing alliance with the Cor-
ruption Eradication Commission that would not only inject recurring flux and com-
petitiveness into electoral contests but also institutionalize the regular imposition of
the transparency required for democracy’s consolidation.
